Tears of the Repentant
by KAndrw
Summary: Expands on a throwaway scene from Guardian Force that I really liked. Warning redemption themes.


_Watching the news tonight, I couldn't help but be reminded that people are fairly horrible creatures sometimes, but sometimes they can surprise you with unexpected kindness. It made me think about a small part from the Zoids anime that I really liked. A part that deserved being revisited. A part that I couldn't quite work out how to fit Spider-Man into, so it's not going to be as good as it might otherwise have been._

**Tears of the Repentant  
By KAndrw**

I hate you.  
You murdered my family, then you watched me burn to death.  
I will never forgive you.

He woke screaming, his covers drenched in cold sweat. Just as he had every night for the past two years. It was the dream about the girl again. He had murdered her family, years ago, then he had set fire to the family's house. He hadn't realised that she was inside. It hadn't really mattered. He hadn't given it a second thought. He didn't even know her name, but since the visits started, he had decided to call her Sylden. It was as good a name as any for the ghost of an eight year-old girl who was steadily driving him insane.

He had been five years old when his parents were killed by soldiers. They might have been from the Empire, or maybe it was the Republic. Possibly his father was the enemy, or possibly his family just had something the soldiers wanted. He didn't remember those things. What he did remember was the cruel smiles on their faces when they shot his father, and the look of derision they gave his mother as they pulled her away from the corner where she was sheltering him. They laughed as one of them slit her throat. His family was not even human to them. The soldiers climbed back into their zoids and left. He remembered holding his mother's body until it grew cold.

He remembered being taken into the orphanage. He had been small. His shoes and clothes were several sizes too small for any of the other children, but they had taken them anyway, leaving him bruised and bloody in payment. Being bullied became expected, from the moment he was woken in the morning by a punch to the face. The random torture and violence continued through the day until well after darkness fell - when the other children finally went to bed, leaving him to cry himself to sleep in his bloody cot, soaked in the spit and urine of the others. The 'holy men' who ran the orphanage turned a blind eye to it all. Perhaps they thought it built character. He would never have asked for their protection anyway. Even he had some understanding of what happened to those they took an interest in. The beatings from his peers were better than that.

He first killed another person on the day of his seventh birthday. Two older girls had decided to teach their brother how to break somebody's fingers. His fingers. They had dragged him into a shed, wrestled him to the ground, and were sitting on his chest and shoulders. One of the girls was about to start the demonstration, and had turned away to tell her brother what to watch. Her attention diverted, she did not see him grab for the screwdriver lying discarded on the floor beside him, did not see him twist his grip and drive it into her thigh. Her surprise and pain gave him a chance to get free and stab the other sister in the arm, the blade punching between the girl's radius and ulna, severing a bundle of nerves and making her scream so loudly that she burst blood vessels in her retinas. In an ill-considered moment of bravado and family loyalty, the brother threw himself into the fray, and was killed instantly by the screwdriver plunged though his eye and into his brain.

He expected to be beaten by the men who ran the orphanage. Maybe even killed. It was hard to care. He was surprised by the way they looked at him. Afraid. There was something in their eyes. Greed, glee, excitement. That day he was sold like a dog, and his life as an assassin began.

For ten years he stole and murdered for the man who bought him. Some of the people he killed probably had it coming. They looked scared as they died, but they didn't look like they felt he was being unfair. But sometimes the people he killed just looked confused as his poison spread through their bodies and burned away their lives. He wondered whether those people had realised what they'd done to make somebody else want them dead. Sometimes he even wondered whether he might have got the wrong person. Not that it really mattered.

One day he arrived home to find that the man who owned him was dead. He was free, as if that word really even meant anything. He drifted from job to job, never finding anything that could hold his attention. Then somebody offered him money to commit another murder. It was easier to accept than think about what else to do. After a couple of jobs, he realised he was a mercenary.

Sylden's parents owed somebody some money, or somebody owed them some money and didn't want to pay it, or they had demanded money in order to keep something quiet. He was pretty sure that money was an issue in some way. It was so hard to remember the little details. He poisoned their water. Actually, his employer had been a little vague on exactly where they lived, so he had poisoned the whole street's water. Once they weren't able to move any more, he set fire to their house. Was it to destroy some evidence? It probably was the keeping something quiet thing after all. Anyway, the girl was upstairs sleeping. He saw her at the window, screaming, as he padded away from the house in his zoid. It was probably better for her to die then than to have to grow up an orphan.

Eventually he slipped up, and a job went bad. His zoid was defeated and the authorities caught up with him. That was two years ago. He had been in jail for two years. It had been the worst two years of his life.

He had expected to have to fight for survival. He had expected debasement and violation. He had expected to need to kill. It was worse. They treated him like a human being. The wardens stamped down on violence between prisoners, and daily life became dominated by introspection. He realised that he was a monster. That's when the girl had started haunting him.

I hate you.  
You murdered my family, then you watched me burn to death.  
I will never forgive you.

Every night she came, just as he managed to drift off to sleep. He wasn't sure whether she was a figment of his guilty conscience, or whether she was an actual ghost. Did he believe in ghosts? Did it matter? She was real enough to make his life hell. He gave her a name, and Sylden gave him a reason to wish he were dead. Time and again, he thought about taking his own life, but every time the thought was overwhelmed by Sylden's voice.

Coward.  
Murderer.  
I hate you.

So every night he woke up screaming. And every morning he reminded himself what he was, what he'd done. He didn't even know how many people's lives he had destroyed. It was a lot. This morning the wall exploded.

Something was attacking the prison. Something big. Something powerful. The cell doors had automatically opened, and the prisoners were fleeing for their lives. His door was stuck. Figures. He called out for somebody to help him open the door, and to his surprise two of his fellow inmates threw their weight against the door, dragging it open. He realised that he mustn't be the only prisoner who had looked inside himself and not liked what he'd seen. This was a chance to begin again. To be the person he wanted to be. To kill the monster.

He burst into the courtyard with two of the men he'd worked with in his previous life, just in time to see the attacker pass. It was a giant scorpion type zoid, and it was destroying everything in its path, shrugging off every attack directed towards it. Malevolence leaked from it, filling him with a poison he'd felt before. Felt his entire life. Anger and indignity. Hatred and spite. The difference was that now he recognised the poison for what it was. He had no use for poison any more. He would not be the monster any longer. And he would not stand aside and let the monster pass by.

It was time to fight again. Not for pleasure. Not for survival. Not even for money. But because it was right. Because somebody had to stand against the monster so that children like Sylden would not have to experience terror.

He found a zoid. It was a Sabre Tiger. Good. He knew Sabre Tigers. In his former life, he piloted one. It felt good to be back in the cockpit. His former colleagues had also found zoids, and they charged out to meet the monster. They hit the monster with everything they had. It did nothing. As the smoke cleared, he saw the brilliant light of the monster's primary weapon charging up.

This was it. He was going to die. Alone. He was going to die alone, just as he had lived alone, almost his entire life. In the final seconds of his life, he heard Sylden's voice.

I hate you.  
You murdered my family, then you watched me burn to death.  
I will never forgive you.  
But I am here with you, Stinger.

His vision blurred by the first tears cried since childhood, he did not see the Deathstinger kill him.


End file.
